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martes, 17 de agosto de 2010

There are signals that Batista will be the Argentinean coach (Yahoo)

If Argentina is considered unpredictable, the football of this country must not be so different. Then there enters the absolute logic that if only a week ago it was clear that Sergio Batista would be an interim coach of the national team until October when there will meet a special commission of the AFA to determine who would be the responsible of the team until the World Championship in Brazil 2014, now everything indicates, without having occurred nothing special, that he will be confirmed in his position for four years.

As it uses to happen, there is not too much explanation to justify this decision that, due to other rumours that are being spread and for the declarations by the directives that surround the Argentinean team, is already taken, leaving aside all polemics for the succession of the position occupied by Diego Maradona until the World Championship in South Africa.

Everything indicates that the designation of Batista as interim, responds more to the contrary to what the press imagines. It was not that in the friendly match of the last Wednesday vs Ireland in Dublin (Argentina won by 1-0 with the goal by Angel Di María in offside position) nor that of the next September 7 in Buenos Aires will serve to put Batista on proof, but he will be confirmed if he does not make serious errors. Namely, what Batista ought not to do is to make mistakes, this is more than to do merits to show his knowledge.

What also seems clear is that if Batista continues as coach of the Argentinean team, even with a good project that goes through a change the Argentinean football from the bases (for example, to put down that the players get to be more familiar with the ball and replace it instead too much physical exercises) up to the tactic aspect (to play football with major possession of the ball), it will not be due to all of this nor for his footballistic understanding with the manager Carlos Bilardo, who now is in the antipodes of his thoughts.

On the contrary, if Batista gets (as it seems) to stay in this position, it is due more to the two important points; his good personal relation with Bilardo since he was player in the World Champion team in Mexico 1986, but more than this with Humberto Grondona, the eldest son of AFA’s president and vice president of the National Teams of the AFA and also once more, as it happened in 2008 with Maradona, it is avoided in that way to convoke the person that won all the surveys of the media, Carlos Bianchi. So, the pushing of the AFA to define soonest possible this question and the triumph vs Ireland helped in this sense.

The cold relation between Grondona and Bianchi is known, though it seemed that the results of the surveys could incline the decision in October, specially with Grondona needing to win urgently the Copa América in 2011 at home after eighteen years of none trophies. But it is also known that Bianchi do not even greet Bilardo, manager and today, who has to present AFA with the name of coaches to be valuated.

It is also known that Bianchi does not accept to conduce his teams with a manager above him and less, with whom is not ideologically compatible and to arrive to be the coach of the national team the context must be facilitator and now in the AFA there are no structure that allows to work as he would like.

Neither it is clear what will Batista do to make his job compatible with Bilardo. How would anybody who sustains that the ball should be well treated and to be similar with his system used by Josep Guardiola with the Barcelona, coexist in his position with somebody that bets on obtaining the result with tactics that are not based on the possession of the ball but on the rival’s mistake. In fact, consulted by some media, Batista said that with the manager “we know each other since a long time and we had only one misunderstanding that has been already cleared up in time of the juveniles”, but nothing is explained of the footballistic differences between both.

In fact, it should be seen if Bilardo was pleased that vs Ireland in Dublin Argentina came out as the Barcelona, with a scheme 4-1-2-3 with four defenders in line, already without Jonás Gutiérrez floating between the defensive line and of the midfielders, with Javier Mascherano a little behind as mid centre though escorted by two good possessors of the ball as Fernando Gago and Ever Banega, and three forwards with Messi by the right though without staying there, Higuaín by the mid and Di María more as forwarder by the left.

But there will be more changes since the last World Championship. For example, already in the second time vs Ireland it was seen that Batista will not appeal any more to the centrals as laterals (Burdisso and Heinze) and in their place he already entered pure lateral markers as Pablo Zabaleta (Manchester City) and Emiliano Insúa (Fiorentina), and he still maintains chances to make return the veteran Javier Zanetti, at least until the Copa América. Also Esteban Cambiasso will have an opportunity and it is almost sure that Juan Roman Riquelme will return to the Argentinean team, confronted with Maradona in the passed cycle.

Batista had already together Riquelme and Messi in the Olympic Games in Peking in 2008 and the result could not be better. The Argentinean team retained then the golden medal won in Athens 2004 winning Brazil in semi-final by 3-0.

It seems that Batista has all chances to turn out the coach of the Argentinean team until Brazil 2014 but there does not seem to be coherent in the structure and very often, decisions so strong have more to do with personal feelings even when the protagonist himself has a plan of action.

Much of it all explains why there passed seventeen years that the Argentinean team does not obtain a trophy and that in the last sixteen editions of the Copa Libertadores, the Argentinean teams won only in six opportunities, though four of them, by Boca Juniors. It does not seem a casualty.